Morgan Valley Memories for Dec. 2, 2011

Driving on I-84 most have noticed the big rock structure that cascades down the mountain in a slide formation known as Devil Slide, but little remains of what used to be the Devil’s Slide Village, now owned by Union Pacific.

The first eight years of my life I grew up in the village of Devil Slide. My father worked at what was then “Ideal Cement Plant” before it was the current Holcim, and Devil Slide village houses were built primarily for those who worked at the cement plant.

Our house was a small 2 bedroom cinder block home along with about 20 other homes in the village.

One of my earliest memories when we lived there was every Thursday the cement plant did blasting off of the hill. We would be warned to get in our houses, by a little old man in a red jeep to get inside, I remember thinking he was the meanest person on the earth, as we would have to hurry home if we were out riding bikes around the village. My parents would always tell us the story when the cement plant blasted off the hill and a huge boulder went through the roof of my dad’s bosses’ house and landed on their living room table.

It was always a fishermen’s market there in Devil Slide, and almost every day in the summer, there would be someone that we could sell a can of fresh hunted worms too. We made quite a bit it seemed as kids, selling to those fishermen passing through.

My other vivid memory was the two train wrecks that happened while we lived in the village. It wasn’t until I watched the movie, “Polar Express” a few years back that the memory came back. The sounds of metal wrecking in that movie, took me back. If you have ever heard a live train wreck, you recognize that awful metal bashing, crashing sound. One of the train wrecks was over the bridge leading from the cement plant outward. That one was caused by someone trying to derail the train on purpose, and I recall that itwas done with a stolen loader. The other train wreck happened on the hill that was next to the bridge. I don’t recall what happened there, but I will always remember the sound, and all the goods from the train that were scattered across the hill.

I have so many good memories from Devil Slide, and though moving to Morgan was easier on my family, those memories of Devil Slide are priceless.

Send in your memories of any of your Morgan Valley Memories past to news@morgannewspaper.com, or bring into our office at 185 N. Comm. St. # 2, or send it through the mail at P.O. Box 190, Morgan Utah, 84050.